This invention relates to depilatators or tweezers useful for removing hair. More particularly, it relates to tweezers which remove hair by a manually controlled selection and grasping of the unwanted hair and then an automatic plucking thereof in response to manual actuation of the automatic plucking means.
Hair on the human body grows to a certain length and then either falls out, is cut, or is removed. Various methods are known for removing unwanted body hair. For permanent removal, electrolysis is used for destroying the root of the hair. For temporary removal of hair from large areas of the body, shaving or treatment by chemical depilatories is known. In the case of removal of a limited number of hairs from smaller areas of the body, such as the eyebrows, or of isolated facial hairs, plucking or pulling the hair out of the body dermis is generally employed. Plucking will keep the spot from which the hair is removed free from new hair growth for about one to six months, depending on whether the dermis is in a resting or growing state.
However, plucking cam be a sometimes unsuccessful, painful, and tedious operation because each hair root resists hair removal and is surrounded by a sensory nerve ending. It has been found that if hair is plucked at a speed in excess of about 100 ft./min., the reaction time of the sensory nerve is exceeded and essentially no pain is felt, which is recognized by those who attempt to pluck unwanted hair with as rapid a plucking motion as possible. But, as it is necessary to maintain a firm grasp on the hair while performing this rapid motion, only few attempts are successful at performing both these required actions.
Thus, a first objective to be satisfied by an efficient tweezer is that it be capable of being easily controlled by the user for initially selecting the hair to be removed and grasping the hair. In this regard, the tweezer should be easily manipulable to facilitate location of the unwanted hair and to position the tweezer hair removing means around the hair. Second, it should be capable of maintaining a firm hold on the hair prior to the removal operation, during which time the tweezer is being manipulated for that operation, and during the removal operation itself. Third, it should be capable of plucking the hair at a rapid speed.
Tweezers having two biased pincer arms, such as the tweezers shown in U.S. Pat. No. 1,286,673, and others of a similar, generally well known construction are fairly easily controlled by the user to select and grasp a hair, but are not capable of removing the hair any faster than the user can accomplish the above-described manual plucking motion. U.S. Pat. Nos. 979,697; 1,036,725; 1,714,822; 1,785,919; and 1,988,219 disclose tweezers having springs or similar means for rapidly retracting pincer arms grasping an unwanted hair, but these tweezers are not easily manipulated. Similarly, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,991,816; 2,025,006; 2,082,263; 2,113,962; 2,123,870; and 2,592,484 disclose tweezers having various types of automatic means for rapidly plucking a hair, but these tweezers do not appear to provide the user with the capabilities of manually controlling the selection and grasping of the hair and of then automatically removing the hair, as do the tweezers of this invention.
The tweezers of this invention are an improvement over the above-discussed tweezers because they are easily manipulable for grasping a hair as close to the skin line as possible and removing it at such a speed that the pain normally incurred in this type of hair removal operation is substantially eliminated.